Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 12/28/2010 1:34:38 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
All too often the ‘simple physics of CO2′ argument is presented to the public by the media, politicians, climate scientists and environmental advocacy groups, in a way that grossly simplifies the issue of the response in global temperature to increasing CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.
An excellent response to the simple physics argument is to be found in the comments at Climate Etc (Professor Judith Curry’s blog)
In reality my feather blew up into a tree
“….. which is that since CO2 is a GHG it follows that increasing CO2 must increase the temperature (of something). No matter how many times we say that the climate is a system with complex non-linear feedbacks they still love this simple principle of physics.
This is because physics works by isolating simple situations from reality. That was the great discovery of physics, that if you simplified reality you could find simple laws. So far so good.
But as every engineer knows, these simple laws often do not work when reality gets messy, as it usually is. Simple physics says that if I drop a ball and a feather they will fall at the same rate.
In reality my feather blew up into a tree.
It is not that the simple law is false, just that there are a number of other simple laws opposing it. In the case of climate we don’t even know what some of these other laws are, so we can’t explain what we see. That is where we should be looking.”
The ‘do you deny the simple GHG physics’ argument is also often an attempt to portray anyone that asks reasonable scientific questions about AGW and the complexity of climate science, as some sort of an ‘anti-science’, ‘flat earther’ denier.
The realities and complexities and unknowns of climate science are described in the IPCC working Group 1 reports, but somehow get ‘lost in translation’ into the Summary for Policymakers, for example (and everyone knows very few politicians even read beyond the executive summary of anything).
IPCC (Chapter 14, 14.2.2.2, Working Group 1, The Scientific Basis)
Third Assessment Report: “In sum, a strategy must recognise what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
Time and time again the media and environment groups ignore this IPCC fact that the climate is a coupled nonlinear chaotic system and that the worst case scenarios of the computer model ’projections’ or scenarios (because they know they cannot use the word prediction) latest example, 4C by 2060, are just one result of computer model ‘runs’ programmed with various extreme values of these assumptions.
The low-end ’projections’ of temperature by model runs with other values and assumptions are ignored completely by CAGW advocates, the data output or projection of a computer model transmorphs into a scientific fact, the data output of a computer model becomes evidence of CAGW.
Climate Science is often portrayed to the public in simplistic terms as a mature science, narrowed down and focussed onto one primary factor - CO2, assuming all else to be equal, and not the possibilities in this type of system that varying one parameter alone, may vary other parameters in non-linear ways, even potentially flipping some from positive to negative feedback (or vice versa)
At the time of the Copenhagen Cop 15 Climate Conference, stunts on TV, rather than the discussion of uncertainties of ‘climate science’ were the order of the day.
The classic demonstration of the ‘do you deny the simple physics of CO2′ argument is a glass tube filled with CO2, heated and then the TV presenter or preferably a senior government scientist says ‘look it has warmed!’ -
As demonstrated by the BBC in their Newsnight program, Copenhagen Climate Conference time, the BBC’s apparent intellectual response to the climategate emails and documents. Watts Up With That, gave a critique of this particular type of TV experiment and CAGW PR.
I wonder what would have happened if a member of the audience had been able to question their methodology, or even ask simple questions like:
What is the percentage of CO2 in the jar?
ie total atmospheric is ~0.038%, what percentage is in the glass jar – 50% plus perhaps, or more?
[Corrected typo spotted in comments - 0.038% / 380 ppm]
If you were to mention that the CO2 effect is logarithmic, then you are likely to be labelled a ‘climate change sceptic’ or worse a ‘climate change denier’ by any passing MSM media TV presenter, environmentalist group or AGW consensus minded politician, and then they will simply stop listening, because you are obviously a fossil fuel funded denier, such has been the CAGW consensus PR.
I wonder if for a sceptical joke, someone could produce a spoof YouTube video of a feather and a cannon ball in a glass jar experiment (non evacuated) and the TV presenter could say to the audience:
“Proof – The Cannon Ball FALLS faster that the feather – Simple Physics clearly show this”
Someone in the audience could then ask, but you have air in the jar? and then get ridiculed by the group as an ‘anti-science’ denier, the scientist/presenter could even bring out the ‘No Pressure’ red button to use!
The simple and not so simple physics of a number of climate parameters, are programmed into the climate computer models. Many of these parameters, it is acknowledged, are not completely understood or that there is serious contentious debate about in the scientific literature. ie aerosols, clouds, solar pacific and atlantic oscillations, volcanoes, etc,etc
Engineers (or economists now, perhaps) will advice climate scientists, model are not reality, reality is often more complicated than any computer model. Take a step back, view with hindsight with respect to risk in the financial markets. At the trouble the cream of the last few decades of science graduates – turned computer modellers – left the world’s economy in, following the modelling of credit risk amongst many other economic assumptions.
Next time anyone starts on about the simple physics of CO2, remember the feather and a cannon ball in a very large glass jar analogy, or for the classically motivated, atop the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Politicians could lay trillion-dollar bets, and dozens of competing scientific groups (publically funded) could even attempt to write a computer models to predict when and where the feather would land…………
Thanks again to Anthony for the opportunity to write at Watts Up With That again. There is a little more about me here.
Or maybe you could stop by at my new blog, I hope that the Watts Up With That regulars like the name.
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Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
since CO2 is a GHG it follows that increasing CO2 must increase the temperature (of something).
A more likely scenario, from Reginald Newell (MIT, NASA, IAMAP)
1 minute video
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Joseph in Florida says:
“In sum, a strategy must recognize what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
This quote should show up in every post about AGW written. It should be required like that warning on the side of cigarette packs.
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John of Kent says:
The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is irrelevant as the whole idea of a greenhouse effect and back radiation from CO2 somehow warming the earth is pure nonsense and goes against the laws of physics and thermodynamics.
You cannot create energy from nothing and heat always moves down hill- i.e. from hot to cold. NEVER the other way round.
http://www.globalwarmingskeptics.info/forums/thread-794-page-1.html
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David L says:
Excellent post! This pretty much sums it up. I too recognized back in graduate school that academic research is focused on single factors or effects. They probe the basic fundamentals such as the core building blocks of molecules, atoms, and subatomic particles. But once you get a job in industry working with engineers, you quickly learn that the fundamentals are obscured by the complex interactions in a system. Engineers have tools such as DOE that help probe these systems, but the academic is completely unfamiliar with these tools and concepts because interactions are typically not a concern in academic research. The climate is a complex system to the nth degree. Boiling it down to a single factor is beyond wrong and naive.
Great article but I fear that it might start a new left-wing greenie campaign to have ‘air’ regulated as a pollutant being that it upsets there fantasy versions of science and physics.
How dare the ‘air’ hold up that feather. If we dont do something about it next whole islands and even continents or oceans may float up a tree. Somehow mankind is to blame for this!!!!
They already are there I know. Greenie = idiot
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Frank K. says:
Mr. Onion says:
“So whether you consider the science very certain or very uncertain, there’s no basis to argue that the ongoing CO2 rise is safe.”
There are a lot of uncertainties in the universe. The earth could collide with an asteroid. We could be invaded by an advanced race of hostile space aliens. Both are more likely to occur than the supposed “harmful effects” of atmospheric CO2.
Where did people like Mr. Onion get the idea that CO2 is “unsafe”? Oh, that’s right – from the same people who stand to profit both politically and financially from promulgating this myth. Please Mr. Onion – follow the money. And for 2011, resolve to put YOUR time, money, and attention towards things that will really make a difference in this world, like helping your neighbor, fighting hunger, and promoting peace.
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kcom says:
“So whether you consider the science very certain or very uncertain, there’s no basis to argue that the ongoing CO2 rise is safe. To know it was safe we’d need the science to be very certain that a doubling of CO2 had little effect on the Earth. We can’t conclude that though if we argue that the science isn’t settled and is all very uncertain.”
We can conclude, though, that claims to know the temperature of the earth in 50 or 100 years are pure hokum. And any plan instituted to address a specific scenario runs the risk of addressing a problem that doesn’t exist or, worse, exacerbating a problem that is underappreciated. To wit, the idea in the 1970s to accelerate the melting of the polar ice caps to combat the incipient scourge of global cooling.
If we don’t understand things, we don’t understand them. It’s as simple as that. It may be uncomfortable, but it doesn’t change the reality. Scientists are tempted all the time to pretend to understand their field of study better than they do (or could possibly, based on current knowledge). But the truth is the science of global warming/climate change is simply not settled and never has been. It will be many years in the future before we know enough to go anywhere near that claim. In the meantime, the best we can do is muddle through and continue to gather data and thrash out various theories, based on their scientific merit, not their political merit.
Why the IPCC models are wrong - Part 1
AND
fyi
The Spencer videos linked at Post #9 are not the best ...but want to spent some more time on them.
This quote should show up in every post about AGW written. It should be required like that warning on the side of cigarette packs.
Thanks very much Ernest. The global warming alarmists are perfectly content with ignoring variables - chief among them sun activity, cloud formations, and precipitation. We go from a coupled nonlinear chaotic system to one of those with inconvenient phenomena ignored. Inconvenient truth indeed.
Those two articles take Greenhouse Theory at face value and by the criterion set up in the theory itself finds no evidence of warming on the basis of greenhouse effect.
The Hidden Flaw in Greenhouse Theory
Falsification Of The Atmospheric CO2 Greenhouse Effects Within The Frame Of Physics
Harvard astrophysicist dismisses AGW theory, challenges peers to 'take back climate science'
It Is Impossible For A 100 ppm Increase In Atmospheric CO2 Concentration To Cause Global Warming
Those four articles each show that Greenhouse Theory has no basis in reality due to a direct conflict with the known laws of physics. No wonder the smoking gun "hotspot" can't be found.
Claim That Sea Level Is Rising Is a Total Fraud
That article pretty much puts the kibosh on any serious trend of planetary warming from any cause. Think about it. If there is absolutely no sign at all of rising sea levels how could the planet be warming? Beyond the centuries long slow warming of the earth and rising of the seas of course. But that is only a few millimeters per century due to the inter-glacial period we are in.
“In sum, a strategy must recognize what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore that long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
“This quote should show up in every post about AGW written. It should be required like that warning on the side of cigarette packs.”
You should mention that this quote is directly from the IPCC 4th assessment report.
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David L says:
onion says:
December 28, 2010 at 5:57 am
“…So whether you consider the science very certain or very uncertain, there’s no basis to argue that the ongoing CO2 rise is safe. To know it was safe we’d need the science to be very certain that a doubling of CO2 had little effect on the Earth. We can’t conclude that though if we argue that the science isn’t settled and is all very uncertain.”
Onion, that’s the logical fallacy of Argumentum ad ignorantiam (argument to ignorance).
Right!
Thanks for the addition.
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